


Latest Issue

by merriman



Category: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Five Times, Gen, Predicting the future, comic books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 09:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Five times the Buckaroo Banzai comic book got it eerily right and one time it was completely off base.





	Latest Issue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lorelei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorelei/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this treat! I always enjoy getting a chance to write about Buckaroo and his friends!

**ONE**

"It's in the latest issue, boss," Big Norse said, reaching into her bag and handing over a well-worn comic book.

"This is the latest issue?" Buckaroo asked, eyeing the creases in the cover and the foxed pages.

"I've been living out of my backpack," Big Norse explained. "Don't you ever read your own comic?"

"Nope," Buckaroo said. "I find it's usually not as exciting as work."

"Well, it is today," Big Norse said as she dodged a crossbow bolt. "Why crossbows?"

Buckaroo had ducked behind a bale of hay to take a quick look through the comic. When Big Norse had sent up a flare in the form of an electronic message to the team, Buckaroo had headed out to help her. While out on a solitude retreat she'd run into a group of folks who'd gotten their hands on some half-destroyed Yoyodyne tech. 

"Are you sure they're not making a movie?" Big Norse asked. "Cause if they're making a movie, they should have told you."

"No movie," Buckaroo said, handing the comic back to her. "Let's see if that barn over there has a jeep like in the comic. Worst case scenario? It doesn't. Best? We get out of here with our skins intact. 

The barn did indeed have a jeep inside. Better yet, it also had some rope, a net, and a pulley system they used to rig a trap that ended up with the crossbow-wielding would-be-Lectroid-helpers tied up and ready for arrest by the local police. Buckaroo called it in himself while Big Norse looked around for any pieces of tech that they might have missed.

**TWO**

It was six in the morning when Scooter arrived at the compound. He rang the buzzer at the gate and hitched his satchel back up onto his shoulder. The gate opened a moment later and none other than Buckaroo himself was walking down the path to meet him.

"Hey there, Scooter. We were expecting you."

"You're just saying that," Scooter scoffed. Sure, he'd stuck with the Irregulars along with his dad, and sure, Buckaroo had told him he was welcome at the Institute any time he felt ready, but Scooter hadn't sent any word ahead. He'd just known he was ready, right in the middle of class one day, and gone home to tell his dad. 

Buckaroo just smiled and led Scooter back up to the main house. 

"How's your dad?" he asked as they walked. "He's still sending in those reports, like clockwork."

"Is that how you knew I was coming?" Scooter asked. "My dad told you?"

"Nah," Perfect Tommy said from the doorway. "It was in the comics. Latest issue's title is 'Scooter Comes Home' so I guess I can take a vacation, since you'll be wanting my job."

Scooter picked up a copy of the comic from a table in the front hall. Sure enough, there he was on the cover, standing at the gate of the Banzai Institute.

"Nah," Scooter said, intentionally mimicking Tommy to see what he'd do. "I want my own job."

Tommy just grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "No vacation for me, I guess. Come on, let's get you a bed in the bunkhouse."

**THREE**

There were five people camped out in front of the Institute gates. None of them had actually applied to the Institute or even joined the Irregulars or anything like that. They were just waiting for a view of Buckaroo or maybe Rawhide or Tommy. Penny and Mrs. Johnson had their fans too but they were off on a trip to Spain to meet with some of the Irregulars there so if any of the five outside the gates were there to see them, they'd have a long wait.

"How many?" Reno asked Pinky as he walked up to the gatehouse.

"Five," Pinky told him.

"Huh."

"What?" Pinky turned to look at Reno. 

"There should be seven."

Just then, Pinky's radio buzzed and he opened up the gate so Buckaroo could wheel his motorcycle (they'd let him keep it after the Lectroid affair) through and up to the garage.

Buckaroo nodded to them and got on to ride the motorcycle around to the garage as Pinky closed the gate again.

"So how do you figure there should be seven, huh, smart guy?" he asked Reno, who held up a comic book.

"It's right here," Reno said, turning to a page mid-issue that showed seven people grouped outside the gates with Reno and Pinky visible in the gatehouse together.

Pinky rolled his eyes. "Man, you are gullible," he said as he turned back to look. "Come on, it's just been a couple of coincidences."

Before Reno could respond, a car pulled up and two people got out, a man and a woman. They waved to the driver, then joined another couple already at the gate. They could hear the couple who'd just arrived groaning in disappointment at having just missed Buckaroo. Reno looked down at the comic, then turned back to the page before it.

"Dang, I forgot Buckaroo had to come in first," he said. "He asked me to pick a page and check it. I figured this would be a good one."

He and Pinky looked out at the people in front of the gate. 

"Huh," they both said.

**FOUR**

The Bunkhouse was full up. Buckaroo had called in all the Cavaliers, the interns, the residents who'd been out on assignment. Everyone within a hundred miles of the Institute who could reasonably show up. Even the Swede had shown up, parachuting in as he'd been dropped off after his latest mission.

"Well, it's not the World Crime League," Billy said. "They've gone quiet since you took them out two years ago, Buckaroo."

"Doesn't mean they're not still out there," Buckaroo pointed out. He was wearing his glasses and going through issue after issue of the comics. The strangely prescient ones had started up a year back as far as they could tell. Prior to that, they'd just been licensed stories about Buckaroo and his adventures, either recounting things that had already happened or making up stories about various villains who didn't exist. Somewhere along the line, they'd started actually predicting the future. The issued Buckaroo had already gone through were on the table nearby and the rest of the crew were flipping through them, making notes and trying to track what had been real and what hadn't happened.

"Any luck tracking down the writers?"

"Four of the five, yeah," Rawhide said. "But one's in the wind. You want us to run him down?"

Buckaroo didn't answer right away. Instead, he sighed and tossed the issue he'd been looking at down on the table, then stood up and walked out of the room. Big Norse picked it up and looked at it. He'd left it open to a two-page spread that showed Buckaroo surrounded by people in the Bunkhouse, all talking about what they should do about some mysterious situation. A single panel was inset in the bottom right corner, showing Buckaroo walking out of the Bunkhouse.

"Okay, this is just creepy," Tommy muttered before following Buckaroo out.

**FIVE**

As it turned out, the comic book helped them out. Or it didn't help so much as it confirmed what they were doing was the right course of action. Pecos had a lead she called in from Portland and the crew headed out there to check on it.

On the pages of the comic, Pecos met them at a warehouse she'd found almost by accident when using a device she'd been working on.

"It was supposed to detect dimensional anomalies caused by Buckaroo breaking through the eighth dimension," she explained as she walked them around to the back of the warehouse. "Looks like it found temporal anomalies too."

The next page of the comic showed the warehouse interior, full of scrap metal and cobbled together machinery made of odds and ends.

After that, the comic was blank, the text boxes showing snatches of conversation that implied that someone in the warehouse had known they were coming, but now things were dark. A panel here and a panel there showed Pecos' face looking through a window, Buckaroo walking through a door, an old-fashioned television in a huge wooden cabinet set against a wall.

"It stopped showing stuff," the young man in front of them said when they found him sitting at a desk near the television. "It's been showing me pictures all year, but then it stopped. I figured eventually it would. I didn't know it was really you!"

They took the television back to the Institute. Who knew why it had started to show the future? Who knew why it was showing Buckaroo? Better to have it in their hands than out there where anyone could get ahold of it.

**SIX**

"Hey, Buckaroo," Scooter said, skidding to a stop as he came around and in front of Buckaroo on a path in the woods behind the main house. "Did you see this week's comic?"

Buckaroo nodded and pulled out a copy from the inside pocket of his coat.

"I did," he told Scooter as he handed it to him. Scooter was on the cover again, along with Buckaroo. But they weren't in the woods and they weren't at the Institute. Instead, they were backed up against a wall, a horde of killer robots firing lasers at them.

Scooter looked it over, then flipped through it.

"Buckaroo, we're not in Morocco," he said.

"No, Scooter, we're not. Good catch."

Scooter rolled his eyes. "So it's over?"

"Looks like it," Buckaroo said. "But hey, that just makes life that much more exciting, right? You never know what'll happen next week."


End file.
